


I Did Something Bad

by SeasOfTrees



Series: Reputation [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Sirius Black, Canon Compliant, Happish, Hogwarts Era, MWPP, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Multi, Outing, TW: Outing, Unsafe Sex, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:40:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22623433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeasOfTrees/pseuds/SeasOfTrees
Summary: When the perfect opportunity came along to ensure a future Death Eater would never be able to join the war, Sirius took it up with eager anticipation.Seducing a Slytherin wasn't precisely something he thought he'd spend his last months at Hogwarts doing, but he wasn't about to pass up the chance to strike one of his first blows in the war.It was a brilliant, perfect, efficient plan.  Until it wasn't.
Relationships: Sirius Black/ Avery Jr, Sirius Black/Original Female Character(s), Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: Reputation [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1188122
Comments: 4
Kudos: 74





	I Did Something Bad

**Author's Note:**

> So this mess of a thing has got to be the angstiest thing I've written in a while. 
> 
> Fair warning, this story involves Sirius sleeping with multiple people, being Problematic™, and a little bit of dub con. It also involves plans to out someone to their family. If that's not something you'd want to read, maybe give this one a pass.

“Leave it,” Remus muttered under his breath, one of his shoes pressing down on the top of Sirius’s.

“Why should I?” Sirius asked, glaring across the Great Hall.

“It’s not worth another detention,” Remus said. He glanced around, let his voice drop. “And the full moon’s in a week, remember?”

Sirius stirred his tea, eyes still trained on the Slytherin table. “Why aren’t the teachers saying anything?”

James wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I don’t know if they’ve noticed yet,” he said through a mouthful of eggs. He plucked another slice of bacon from the platter in the middle of the table.

As he said those words, Avery’s wand flitted out of his pockets, sending a small white bird in a low arc between tables. A Hufflepuff second year squeaked as yet another bird hit her — Sirius could guess where.

Sirius looked over at the teachers’ table. They didn’t appear to be paying any attention to the goings on.

“Someone should stop him,” Sirius muttered.

Remus glanced up through his eyelashes. There was a brief flick of his wand and something erupted in Avery’s tea, sending hot droplets in every direction. The Slytherins in the blast zone all cursed loudly and started trying to clean their clothes, their attention turned — at least temporarily — away from vexing the younger students.

James snorted. “Nice one.”

“Good enough?” Remus said.

“For now,” Sirius muttered.  
  


-/-

“So why do you have it out for Avery?” James asked, glancing over Sirius’s shoulder.

“He’s a prick.”

“I mean, yeah, but he’s not the only prick. You sweet on him or something?” 

Sirius glared at James, his eyes darting around the common room, even though they were alone. “Why on _earth_ ,” he hissed, “would I want _him_?” A single drunken confession over a filched bottle of firewhiskey, and suddenly James was convinced Sirius wanted to snog every man in the castle.

“I dunno,” James shrugged. “He’s not horrible looking. He’s got to be one of the smarter ones. If I was going to have hate sex with a Slytherin…”

“You’d have it with Snape,” Sirius said, attempting to take up the reins guiding the conversation, “don’t lie.”

James made a gagging sound. 

Avery’s name floated down a side hallway on the map until it disappeared. “Mmmm,” Sirius hummed. “Must be the Room of Requirement or something. I’ll go investigate.” 

He stood to leave.

“Oi!” James snatched the map back. “Doesn’t leave the dormitory, remember? Do you want a repeat of last week? Filch almost got a hold of it.”

“Yes, mum,” Sirius muttered, rolling his eyes.

“Now,” James said, bringing his voice up to a squeaky, mothering frequency. “Don’t forget to bring protection when going for a secret meeting with your boyfriend!”

Sirius grabbed something on his way out (one of Remus’s books, from the heft of it) and tossed it back towards James without looking.

He slammed the door on him, ignoring the loud thump and James’s resulting laughter.

The hallway had little to no foot traffic that time of day, so Sirius managed to make it there without catching anyone’s eye. He rounded the corner and there it was, a door that hadn’t been there before, a door not on the map. 

“Gotcha,” he whispered with a smirk, taking his wand out from his robes. He stepped forward, his hand reaching out to take the door knob.

Then he heard the sounds.

Faint gasps, and the echo of a creak. Anyone over the age of twelve knew what those sounds meant. Knew to walk away. Knew they were wandering close to a very private moment.

Sirius crept up to the door frame, pressing his ear against the wood. The moans were getting louder, and Sirius felt his trousers tighten in sympathy. He glanced around the hall, but there was no need. This was a very underutilized portion of the castle. He’d only discovered it when they were working on the map. It was the ideal place to take someone for something like that.

He adjusted himself in his pants and listened on. He frowned. He’d been expecting the usual give-and-take of coupling — high-pitched moans and feminine signs broken up by the occasional masculine grunt. But what he was hearing just then were only the sounds of male pleasure.

She must be the quiet type.

 _Or_ —

He pulled out his wand and muttered a quick spell. A portion of the wall became see-through, and he peered into the room like a cop on one of Moony’s muggle programs — he could see the people in that room, they couldn’t see him.

He looked at the couple on the other side of the wall and had to cover his mouth to keep himself from gasping.

Avery. Avery riding… someone.

He couldn’t see who. The man was lying on a tangle of blankets, his trousers still on, the rest of him in shadow. Avery was on top of him, his naked body grinding by the light of the single candle, fucking himself down on Mystery Man’s cock in a style James’s secret book called “reverse cowgirl.”

And it looked like he was loving it.

Sirius had never seen Avery without a scowl or a malicious grin on his face. Seeing the look of unrestrained ecstasy felt more intimate than watching his cock bounce with his movements.

He was close. Sirius could tell. Mystery Man gripped his hips and thrust up into him. Avery cried out. The movements got faster — brutal — and Sirius never thought to look away. He bit his lip as Avery’s cock started shooting out white ropes of come.

The climax brought Sirius back to reality. He ended the spell and stepped away from the wall. His hand drifted town to the tent in the front of his trousers. 

Where was Octavia?

-/-

The steady heat of Octavia Hatchlow’s mouth was normally distracting, but now it was helping him think.

Sirius was where any red blooded Hogwarts boy would want to be: in a closet off an old hallway, having his cock serviced by Ravenclaw’s prettiest prefect.

And yet, his thoughts were on the other side of the castle.

So, Avery was gay. 

Or, at least, he liked men as much as anything else.

That was … interesting.

Octavia was applying suction directly to his tip, and Sirius ran his fingers through her soft hair in appreciation.

That was good to know.

A hand sneaked down to his balls.

And Sirius enjoyed watching him.

The images lingered. A thick, swollen cock. Broad male hands gripping narrow male wrists. The sheer power of it all.

Sirius grasped an old pipe jutting out of the wall as he came.

Well, he thought. Shit.

-/-

Sirius collapsed down on the chair by the fireplace, letting out a loud sigh.

“What’s got you in such a mood?” Remus asked, not bothering to look up from the book he had balanced on his knee. He took a sip of the tea he must’ve smuggled up from the kitchens.

“I’m concocting a plan,” Sirius said, fingers arranged in a sort of steepled way that they didn’t fall in naturally, but that he felt made him look thoughtful.

Remus looked up. “And why has that got you looking like Peter after James ate the last of his biscuit stash?” The fire was casting him in an especially flattering light that evening.

“It’s delicate,” he said after a moment.

“Since when has something being delicate stopped you? You’re a veritable bull in a china shop when it comes to this sort of thing.”

“You don’t even know what sort of thing it is,” Sirius said, glancing at Remus from the corner of his eye.

“Enlighten me, then,” Remus said with an academic sort of wave of his hand. His fingers fell into the same steeple. It looked more natural on him.

Sirius opened his mouth, but the words caught in his throat. He swallowed. “Sorry, mate. This one’s going to be a personal project.”

Remus raised a brow, but said nothing. The Marauders weren’t normally in the habit of keeping things from each other. “Alright, then,” he said, studied neutrality. He went back to reading his book.

Sirius watched him for a moment. The last few years had been kind to Remus. He’d always been a bit ahead of the rest of them, development wise. Partially, Sirius figured, because of the physical strains of the transformations he underwent every month. But part of it was probably just Remus. He’d grown to be the tallest of all of them, and his baby fat was completely gone. The shadow of stubble darkening his jaw was broken by a few faint scars, giving him an off-kilter sort of handsomeness.

Sirius had first noticed his friend was beautiful a few years prior, before he ever really came to terms with the possibility that he _maybe might sort of kind of like blokes a little_. At first his hyper-awareness of him had made him nervous, made him wonder if something was wrong with him. Now it just hurt a little to look at him too long.

-/-

Seeing Avery again was even weirder than he’d expected.

He had double potions with the Slytherins, and that tiny piece of information made everything Avery did look _different_.

That little smile towards his friend, was that flirting? The delicate way that he handled the dried flowers … was that him being effeminate? There was a grace to him Sirius hadn’t noticed before. He tossed his head back in laughter at one point and it reminded Sirius of a few days before… the way his back arched as he moved over that other man… who was that man?

“Sirius?”

“Mmmm?”

“Should I be expecting that dried rose this century?” Lily’s hand was outstretched. Something about her posture suggested that it had been like that for a while.

“Sorry,” Sirius said, his cheeks heating, he shook his head slightly and let his hair fall like a black curtain around it. He handed her the rose.

“What’s up with you? You seem distracted.”

“I really, _really_ don’t give a shit about this sleeping drought,” Sirius answered with a little smile. At least it wasn’t a lie.

Lily cocked an eyebrow, but let the topic drop.

“I’m sure I’m not as exciting a partner as Remus, but since he’s out sick, you could at least try to care about my grade.”

“I mean,” Sirius made an elaborate yawning motion, glancing back at Avery, “I was hoping I could just decorate our table and you could carry all my weight. Were you expecting me to _work_?”

Lily let out a snort. “You aren’t as charming as you think, Black.”

“Nah,” Sirius said, turning purposely away from Avery’s table. “I’m very charming, Potter’s just twisted your mind and indoctrinated you into thinking nerds like him are sexy.”

“Since when have you had a problem with sexy nerds?” Lily asked, crushing the rose petals with her mortar.

“What was that?” Sirius asked, something inside of him tightening.

“Just stir, Sirius,” Lily said.

-/-

Winter was closing in. Sirius could smell it.

The grounds stretched out before him, crisp and cool as fall started to stutter towards its close. The Slytherins were practicing quidditch. He caught brief flashes of emerald as they circled their field.

There was a war brewing. Once they weren’t in school anymore, whatever tenuous peace there was would b gone. He knew. They knew. Everyone knew. Sometimes everything felt like a lie. In a few months time, he’d be a soldier. Today they were classmates, tomorrow enemies. It was the stuff shitty poetry was made of.

For the longest time, the Slytherins — Death Eaters, he corrected himself, _call them what they fucking are_ — seemed like an impenetrible wall of evil. Like nothing would stop them, nothing would separate them.

But that was before Sirius knew Avery’s secret.

He’d grown up in that world, he knew how easy it was to get burned off the wall. If Avery’s family or friends found out he liked men…

A plan started to form in Sirius’s mind, one that had been stewing for nearly a week. He could eliminate him before he was even a threat.

He could…

“Padfoot!”

Sirius started, gripping the edge of the window so he wouldn’t fall off. “Moony,” he released the name like a sigh.

“You... forgot your book, for class? The one you have in ten minutes?” He took in Sirius’s reclined form, seeming to understand as he spoke that Sirius had no intention of attending that class.

“Oh, thanks,” Sirius took it. Remus didn’t back away. 

The clouds above broke briefly and the hallway was hit with undiluted sunlight for the first time all day. The tiny dust motes floating in the afternoon air were illuminated, suspended in the cold and stillness. The bits of blond in Remus’s hair shone gold. The greens of his eyes were brighter than normal, rich and earthy and springlike.

Not for the first time, Sirius was struck with an overwhelming desire to kiss his friend.

“You seem sort of distracted these days,” Remus said, shifting to another foot. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Sirius said, too quickly, “it’s fine.”

Remus’s brow furrowed. “You don’t seem fine. Is it the _secret scheme_?” He was trying to play the phrase off as a joke. It didn’t work.

Sirius considered lying, but thought better of it. “Maybe a little. I can’t really—”

“Get into it, yeah,” Remus’s voice was tinged with disappointment that made Sirius want to flinch. There was something soft about the way Remus expressed unhappiness that made it all the worse. He accepted misfortune with the ease of someone resigned to their own chronic unluckiness.

“I’ll tell you soon,” Sirius promised, unsure even as he said it.

Remus tried to shrug casually. It was adorable, the failure. “You don’t need to if you don’t want to.” He stepped back, hands stuck in his pockets. “I’m sorry if I’ve been prying.”

Sirius was about to reassure Remus, but he was already walking away.

-/- 

Getting Avery into the greenhouse was easy.

Quick, appreciative glance in the hall. Brush a bit to close a few days while getting potion ingredients. Quick smile before turning away. Prolonged eye contact.

Then, after about a week, a casual, “fancy a trip to the greenhouse?”

The greenhouse wasn’t a terribly popular spot for amorous meetings, being full of windows and plants with such diverse needs that it was impossible to predict when someone would come in to attend to one of them. But Sirius had found a portion of the sprawling mess of the place that wasn’t visible from the outside. And the herbology professor was out of town, visiting her mother.

If Sirius had invited him to some secluded portion of the castle, Avery would have been anticipating a fight. The greenhouse was public enough to be neutral territory.

Sirius arrived ahead of him, the oppressive humidity of the hot house choking his breath and curling his hair. The riot of colorful flowers surrounding him made him forget — just for a second — that it was pouring outside. Inside, the raindrops pelting the roof felt like finger trapping a drum.

The door opened behind him, and there was Avery. His hair had gotten wet in the walk over, it clung in loose waves to the side of his head. He stepped closer to Sirius, suspicious. “Well, I’m here. What do you want?”

Sirius’s heart was drumming so fiercely he could feel it in his temples, but he kept his face serene. He smiled a smile that had gotten him through doors, out of detention, and into pants. “Follow me,” he said, hand extended.

Avery looked down at the hand like it was some sort of large insect, and Sirius dropped it after a second, never letting the smile leave his face. “Suit yourself,” he said, turning and walking further into the hot house.

He listened for footsteps. Avery followed.

He stopped at a reinforced segment of the building towards the back. Between the thick glass of the exterior walls and the metal sheets covering the corner, it was impossible to see inside from any angle. He turned, and Avery’s eyes were scanning the surroundings, no doubt coming to the same conclusion about their relative visibility.

“What do you want, Black?” Avery asked again, more tense this time.

Sirius could have said something clever. He could have been charming. If it had been anyone else, he would have.

But this was Avery and this was mental and he could barely even hear his own thoughts, so instead, he just sank to his knees.

Avery blinked in surprise as Sirius’s finger’s went to his belt, making direct eye contact with Avery as he did so, daring him to question it. Daring him to say he wasn’t interested.

That didn’t happen. Avery recovered quickly.

“Sirius Black, on his knees for me,” Avery said, shaking his head in amused disbelief. “I knew you were a whore, but…”

Normally, Sirius would have taken his wand from his robes and cursed the stupid smirk off the git’s face. But he was on a mission, so he kept his face in a studied sort of neutrality as he undid Avery’s pants.

And there was a cock.

He’d seen one before, of course. He had one of his very own and had caught glimpses of several others. But this was different. He’d never had a hard cock so close to his face before. Thought about it sure, but this was in daylight, and it wasn’t a fantasy he was using to get through History of Magic. It was very, very real.

It looked different, that close. The way the skin followed a sort of gradient from the pallor of Avery’s hips to the ruddy skin halfway up the shaft, to the flushed, purplish head. The glans peeking out from the tender stretch of foreskin.

“You just gonna gawk at it, Black, or are you gonna suck it?”

Avery’s obnoxious voice broke Sirius out of his stupor, and he took Avery in hand. The Slytherin’s hips tensed slightly at the sensation. Sirius smiled.

 _Like you’ve seen the girls doing it, Black_ . _You’ve got this._

He gave the prick a tentative stroke, trailing his fingers lightly up the skin — soft and familiar, but so strange in its otherness — and then back down. He held the thing up at a sharp angle, and licked it from base to tip, wincing slightly as his tongue hit the tangle of hair at the base. It tasted like skin, but musty in a way. And the tip was saltier than he’d thought it would be.

He explored a little more, with kitten licks and soft strokes. Coquettish glances through his lashes to make Avery think he was teasing, not testing new territory.

Avery’s fingers went to his hair at some point. “C’mon, Black. I haven’t got all day.”

Sirius took a deep breath of thick hothouse air, and took Avery’s head into his mouth. It was a strange, sponge-y texture, and Sirius felt along its bottom ridge with the tip of his tongue.

“There you go,” Avery muttered, his wry remark belied by the shudder running through his body. His fingers tightened in Sirius’s hair, and he pushed Sirius further down.

Sirius maneuvered as quickly as he could to get his teeth out of the way, his jaw wide open and his throat gagging against the sudden intrusion. Avery pulled him back up by the hair, yanking him off his cock. Sirius coughed, chest heaving.

Avery’s lips were set in smirk Sirius was _seconds_ away from hexing off his stupid face. “Having difficulties there, Black?”

“Be a fucking gentleman, Avery,” Sirius said, voice hoarse and echoing the warnings of some of his earliest lovers, “don’t just shove me down there.” He pushed Avery’s hips back against the wall. His body made a satisfying, solid sound as it connected with the metal. Avery let out a little grunt as the air escaped his lungs. Sirius took him in his mouth again.

Avery’s hands clenched into fists, but he rested them against the damp metal. Sirius let a satisfied sound out through his nose as he started bobbing his head further along the Slytherin’s cock. He tried to go a bit deeper, but his throat gagged again and he had to pull away. He tried to cover the retreat up with a few hard strokes to the shaft, before teasing the underside of his head with his tongue. Avery hissed in appreciation, and Sirius started massaging his balls with his free hand. Avery’s head fell back against the wall. Sirius took his head in his mouth once more, careful not to push himself too far this time. He started bobbing his head rapidly, stroking the parts of Avery he couldn’t fit in his mouth. His cheeks were hollowed out and on the occasional upstroke the seal would be broken, making a positively obscene squelching sound that made the coil in Sirius’s stomach wind tighter.

He fell into a sort of mindlessness, all his attention focused on his mouth and the hot, hard object he was sucking on. There was something so primal and simple about the action that his schemes started to melt from his thoughts. All he wanted to do was taste and feel and suck and lick and stroke. Arousal burned painful and urgent in his crotch, and he palmed himself lightly through his trousers to relieve some of the ache. 

Avery’s hips started tensing and Sirius was snapped back to reality. Shit.

He moved the hand up from his crotch and started massaging Avery’s balls once more, slowly moving his fingers back to accomplish the one thing he needed to get done that day. Scheme-wise, that was.

Avery was close, he could tell. When Sirius started prodding at the tight pucker behind his balls, he let out a surprised sound, then a loud groan. His fingers went once more to Sirius’s hair, and Sirius did everything he could not to gag as Avery spilled into his mouth.

He pulled off of Avery as soon as he could, spitting the disgustingly salty seed onto the tile. “Warn a man, eh?” He rasped, wiping the back of his hand against his mouth.

Avery shrugged, not looking terribly contrite. “Sorry, mate. Thanks for the blowie.” He did up his trousers and walked away, leaving Sirius alone with the tent in his pants, the ache in his jaw, and the taste in his mouth.

-/-

He could hear Remus humming to himself from well outside the bathroom, and he closed his eyes. _No_ , he prayed, _not now_.

Remus stepped in, heading over to the stalls, but stopped when he saw Sirius. “Why are you brushing your teeth in the middle of the afternoon?”

Sirius spat into the sink, wiping toothpaste from the corners of his lips. “Vomit flavored bean,” he muttered, eyes on the floor.

“Ah,” Remus said, looking like he didn’t quite believe him.

Sirius rinsed his mouth out, but it was no use. He wasn’t sure the taste would ever go away.

That night, while trying to fall asleep, he would get hard remembering the time in the greenhouse. He tugged himself off quietly with a practiced hand, his thoughts naturally finding their way to Remus.

-/-

“Yeah, fuck. Just like that.”

“You like that?” Sirius asked, completely unnecessarily. No, a bit necessarily. He needed to feel in control of this little episode.

“Just keep doing that, Black.”

Sirius did as Avery said, not because he said it, but because it was the fastest way to get Avery off.

“Shit _shit_ yes.”

The Slytherin was vocal.

“Just keep—”

Sirius just kept.

Avery came a moment later, hot and quick and loud and… a little bit on Sirius’s robes.

“Aw bloody _hell_.” Sirius pulled out his wand and cleaned off his uniform. He was completely dressed, though there was a visible dark spot where his cock was straining against his trousers.

Not that Avery gave a shit. He tossed a quick _thanks_ over his shoulder as he zipped up and headed off to wherever the fuck Slytherin pricks went when they weren’t in Sirius’s line of vision.

Sirius tugged himself off and went to meet Remus in the library.

-/-

The passing of the full moon meant that the Marauders were free to earn as many detentions as their busy schedules allowed for, and so James and Sirius had earned themselves a night polishing Quidditch trophies while the moon was still fat in the sky.

What they’d done was irrelevant, especially to them. It had something to do with fire or levitation and they absolutely deserved it.

“So I talked Lily into sneaking away with me tonight. I was thinking Room of Requirement. Or maybe that cupboard behind the painting of the nun.”

“Nothing like a nun to get the juices flowing,” Sirius said. “Sure that’ll put her in the mood.”

“You seeing anyone these days?” James asked. “Haven’t really heard much. Usually you’re bragging about your latest conquest. Thinking of joining the sisterhood yourself?” James snorted at his own wit.

“Nah, still holding out until McGonagall finally asks me for my hand,” Sirius set aside a trophy from the mid-50s and started on the next.

James looked at him for a moment. “Sirius?”

“Mmmm?”

“Do you think Moony’s been a little… off?”

Sirius frowned. “Off?”

“Yeah,” James waved his hands around, “strange? Sad? I’ve tried to talk to him, but he hasn’t been saying much.”

Sirius looked at him.

“I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk to him?”

“Why do you think I’d have better luck?” Sirius asked.

James looked like he was about to say something, then decided against it. “Just talk to him. Please?”

After, James went off to meet up with Lily, and Sirius headed up to their room.

It smelled like alcohol. Remus was in the corner, knees under his chin, hugging himself, looking out the window.

 _Shit_.

Sirius glanced over at Peter’s bed. Empty.

“Hey,” Sirius said, voice soft in a way he wasn’t sure it had ever been before, eyeing the empty bottle of contraband muggle whiskey Remus had snuck in months ago, now empty on the floor. “Is… everything alright?” He wrinkled his nose at his own words. Of course everything wasn’t alright. Anxiety tugged at his gut.

Remus turned to him and wiped a hand across his face, like someone trying to conceal their tears, which only made them more obvious. “I… uh… I…” his words were a bit slurred. Sirius tried to remember how much whiskey was left in that bottle when last he’d seen it. He mentally calculated how much Remus probably drank. Numbers got jumbled up and Sirius just replaced them with the obvious answer: a lot.

“You…?” Sirius prompted, frowning.

“I goh… dumped.”

A shock of something unpleasant moved across Sirius’s skin. “I… didn’t know you were dating anyone.”

“I wassn,” Remus said, turning back to the window. “’S the problem.”

“Ah,” Sirius said, nodding and not understanding one bit. “I see.”

“D’ya?”

“Someone you like turned you down?” was the best explanation Sirius could come up with.

“Nah-uh,” Remus said, shaking his head, which, as it often is when one is drunk, turned into a full-body gesture. “Sss—sommon I was _fuckin_ didn… doesn wanna… wanna… neemore. Sssaid there was sssommon else… so I can juss _fuck off._ ”

“She told you to fuck off?”

Remus gave Sirius a long look, annoyance mixed with … what? He couldn’t tell.

But Remus shook his head again, eyes trained on the floor. “No, juss implied it.”

“And you liked her, so you’re upset?”

“ _Hated_ ‘em,” Remus informed the carpet he was now glaring at emphatically.

“Then why do you care?”

Remus looked up at him. “No’un wantsss ta get dumped.”

“But you hated her.”

Remus laughed without humor. “When you’re like me, you take wha you can get. When you’re a freak,” he said, voice clearer as it said something Sirius imagined he’d been turning over in his head for some time, “no one cah make ya fee normal, sssso ya look for people who can make ya feel jus _differen_.”

-/-

Remus was still sleeping when Sirius was getting dressed the following morning. Sirius had taken off his shoes and propped him up on a mountain of pillows. He took a hangover drought from his trunk and put it by Remus’s bedside.

The next time he saw Remus was at lunch. They didn’t say anything to each other. By the end of the day, everything was back to normal. Whatever had happened to Remus, it was buried. Like so many things before.

-/-

Detentions with Remus were rare, but enjoyable. Remus was rarely in the habit of getting caught, and some small, shameful part of Sirius was always a little pleased when he did. Time alone with him felt valuable. Precious.

They were cleaning out some old cabinets in the potion room’s pantry. Slughorn had given them a few vague and unhelpful instructions, provided them with bins color coded for different safety measures, then retreated to his office to answer some letters from former pupils, many of which he happily reported were holding some sort of political office, or published something, or were on some team. Sirius couldn’t remember. He tended to dismiss whatever Slughorn said right after he said it. Particularly if the words involved, “committee,” or “rising star,” or “always asks for my input.”

He and Remus had taken to playing a game. One of them would conceal a given bottle’s label with his thumb while holding it up to the other’s nose, who would have to guess its contents from smell alone. If the sniffer got it wrong (and the chart Slughorn provided said the ingredient was safe to consume) then the loser had to put a dropper of the ingredient on his tongue.

Remus was the first to get one wrong, though he lucked out and got a slightly fermented cherry elixir. Sirius was not so fortunate — he gagged on the dropper of… of…

“What was that again?” He spat in one of the bins, looking around for something to wash his mouth with.

Remus squinted at the label. “Uh… actually, I’m not sure. But it had the little blue dot, so…” he tapped his fingernail against the glass. It made a precise clinking sound. “It’s safe.”

“It’s vile.”

“Yeah, well…” Remus poured the liquid out out into the blue bin. He set it down with the other empties. “Them’s the rules.”

“If you don’t know what it is, how do you know I got it wro—” 

Something had caught in Sirius’s throat. He tried to clear his throat, but instead of relief, there was an uncomfortable fluttering sensation. He doubled over as it hit his gag reflex, hacking and heaving, until — 

“Aaagh!” A butterfly flew out of his mouth.

Remus, who’d been about to perform the Heimlich on Sirius, stepped up from his crouch behind him and blinked at the beautiful blue thing fluttering up towards the potion’s shelves. It settled somewhere sticky, its tongue darting out to some pink-colored pool.

“Well, shit,” Remus said.

“What… the… _fuck_?” Sirius wheezed, still recovering from the coughs.

“Help me catch it,” Remus said, going to another shelf and picking up the largest clean jar he could find.

“You can’t put that thing outside,” Sirius protested, voice hoarse, “it’s the middle of winter. It’ll freeze to death.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Remus said, moving a step stool over to the shelf with his foot and climbing up towards the butterfly, which didn’t seem terribly troubled by his presence. “Hold the jar for me, would you?”

Sirius held the jar open, his hands shaking as he coughed again. Remus sent a tiny gust of wind out from his wand, blowing the butterfly into the jar. Sirius closed the lid.

“What are we going to call it?” Remus asked, his face distorted through the curved glass. “You’re technically it’s mother, so you should name it.”

“Piss off,” Sirius said conversationally. But then he considered it. “Horace.”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “You serious?”

“I’m always Sir—”

“We banned you from making that joke second year, remember? And please tell me you aren’t naming the butterfly after the potions master.”

“I mean, it was his potion, so he’s technically the father.”

“Oh, god. There’s a mental image.” Remus stepped back, rubbing his eyes as if to scrape away the imagined sight. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Well how do you think I felt when I was in _labor_? That thing was boxing with my gag reflex. I’m surprised I didn’t vomit tonight's pudding all over the floor.”

“And yet you powered through.”

“I’m made of stern stuff, Moony. These old Black genes are the finest of kinds,” he had another coughing fit.

When he righted himself, Remus was giving him a dubious look. “I guess that would explain why they keep marrying their cousins.”

Sirius smiled wryly. “Wouldn’t want to risk depriving a child of these good looks.”

Remus wrinkled his nose, and Sirius felt a stab of annoyance. In the circles that produced him, marrying your cousin wasn’t weird. Remus’s insistence on being grossed out by that had always made him feel like he was being judged for something he hadn’t done.

Would have done, though, he thought. If he hadn’t left the family.

Remus poured some old sugar water he’d found on one of the shelves into Horace’s jar. “Well, at least you don’t have any cousins you’d want to marry. Right?” Remus glanced up at him, as if the clearly unpleasant thought had just occurred to him.

Sirius just forced a smile. “Right.”

He and Remus were reared with different understandings of right and wrong. Part of being the exile, the import, the refugee, the whatever, was that Sirius almost always had to retrain his brain to fit with Remus’s (and James’s, and Peter’s) understanding of what was and was not moral. The process wasn’t always as easy as it should have been.

That was a word that got used a lot in those sorts of situations. _Should_.

-/-

Sirius tensed.

“It doesn’t work if you don’t relax,” Avery said, fingertip prodding Sirius’s ass.

Sirius tried to remember if his bisexual persona had ever been fingered before. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go this far, not just yet. But to admit that would be to show vulnerability to Avery. He needed to be invulnerable. Impenetrable (well…). 

But, he figured, it was kinda hard to be invulnerable when someone was about to stick part of their hand up your ass.

“It’s uh… been a while for me,” was the compromise he came up with as he tried to relax the muscle. Though the problem with relaxing was the more you tried at it, often the harder it was.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Black,” Avery said, and his voice was almost… comforting? Not kind but not unkind.

It made Sirius more uncomfortable than the digit circling his hole.

Avery pulled out his wand and muttered a quick spell Sirius didn’t know. He felt a… loosening and a slickening where Avery’s finger had been minutes before. It was… unpleasant.

Then Avery’s finger was back, circling gently, teasing at penetration. It was… not unpleasant.

Avery pressed a finger in, slowly. Sirius inhaled, sharply.

“Relax.”

He tried.

Eventually Avery was able to get the first finger in, moving it gently in and out of Sirius, who was trying really hard to figure out how he felt about the new development. There were moments, movements, that felt good. Then Avery added another finger and there was that _stretch_ and Sirius hissed a little at the pain. He felt vulnerable and strange and full in a way that didn’t make intuitive sense to him. Also he kinda felt like he was shitting when Avery pulled his fingers out, and that wasn’t pleasant at all.

He also kind of felt like maybe he would like it more if it was being done by someone he didn’t hate. Someone who knew he’d never done it before.

Avery had worked his way up to three fingers and Sirius was glad that he was fingering Sirius from behind so he didn’t have to school his expression. He had no faith in himself as an actor at that point.

“Ready?”

“What?”

Avery made an impatient sound and when he spoke again his mouth was very close to Sirius’s ear. “Do you even want me to fuck you, Black?”

Something flashed through Sirius. A cocktail of emotions so intermingled he wouldn’t have been able to list them all if he took a sip. 

At the moment he felt like he was drowning in them.

Avery was waiting.

 _This is part of the plan, right_ ? He thought. _He fucks you, you fuck him. Get a picture then get out._

Right. The plan. The scheme. This was just a step.

Sirius arched his back in a way he hoped was inviting and looked over his shoulder. Avery’s face was still right there, so they were almost kissing when he said, “fuck me.”

And so Avery did.

The initial penetration wasn’t too bad. Avery had done a good job fingering and the spell he’d cast made everything very slick. Still, Sirius winced when it went in, bracing himself against the wall. They were in one of the old hallways they’d taken to using for meetings. The rough stone felt cold and cruel on his hands as Avery fucked him.

He’d gone soft while he was being prepped. He looked down at his flaccid cock, half lit by a torch and flopping sadly in time with Avery’s movements behind him. Avery grunted rhythmically over his shoulder.

 _So this is what getting fucked feels like._ Like so many sensations, the idea of it was more powerful than the _in the moment, skin against skin_ of it. The push and pull, in an out. Full and empty.

It was starting to feel a bit good, he thought after a moment. Avery was touching on a few spots inside of him that made little jolts of pleasure spread through his body. His cock was starting to show a bit more interest in the goings on. Maybe there was something to this… it wasn’t too bad… Maybe if he started playing with himself he’d be able to get off…

Avery shuddered behind him and came, leaving a deep part of Sirius that wasn’t particularly used to feeling anything feeling very hot.

Avery was leaning against him, breath shallow. “Lovely,” he said after a moment, pulling out of Sirius.

Sirius stayed leaned up against the wall as he heard the jingle of a belt behind him.

Avery walked away without a word.

After a moment, Sirius pulled his trousers back up, tucking his shirt back in. He straightened his tie. Smoothed some fingers through his hair. Pulled on the robe he’d discarded on the floor.

Took a deep breath and closed his eyes, which were starting to blur with tears.

He didn’t want to go straight back to his room, not just then. He wandered for a bit, not noticing that he’d taken a path that avoided most people until he’d been alone for some time.

He figured the astronomy tower would be mostly vacant at that part of the night, and of the year. He was right.

When he stepped out into the winter air, it was just Sirius and the stars.

He leaned up against the railing, trying to ignore the vague ache in his core. 

He was going to need a shower, he thought. A really, really thorough one.

He replayed it in his head. He moved, and his muscles clenched in a way that made him feel like Avery was still there.

God. He felt like Avery had completely saturated him. He looked down at his hands, the familiar shape and color of them. The faint lines he’d known all his life, barely visible in the moonlight. The tiny scar on his thumb from some long-forgotten accident. The calluses from his casual attempts at guitar playing. He ran a thumb across the top of his other hand, studying the scattered hairs, the rougher, dryer skin on his knuckles.

He was still him. Avery was gone.

It didn’t matter what he tried to tell himself, though. Avery was still there. Like he’d become a new part of him.

Did that make him dirty, he wondered? Was he fully debauched and broken now? A rejected Black, now some Slytherin’s whore?

The ache was still there, not wholly unpleasant. It had felt good at moments, he remembered. Being with Avery.

No, he figured, studying the constellations, frozen and unchanged in the winter sky, he didn’t regret that it happened. He just maybe wished his first time had been with someone else.

-/-

If Peter and James noticed the large enclosure Remus and Sirius had made for Horace the Butterfly out of a stolen tank, a few heating charms, and some enchanted flowers, they didn’t say anything.

And if they noticed Sirius was a bit quieter than he normally was, and tended to stare out windows a bit more, and maybe took longer showers than he used to, they didn’t say anything about that either.

-/-

His dynamic with Avery wasn’t going the way he wanted it to. The power was getting to be too one sided. If Avery had known how new it all was to him, maybe that would have given the dynamic a softness. Avery would have helped him figure things out, maybe. If he’d been anyone but himself. If Avery had been anyone but Avery.

He tracked Avery down the day after Avery unknowingly deflowered him. It wasn’t hard to get him into a closet. Sirius shoved him down on his knees and had him sucking him off without further word.

Avery was good at it and Sirius didn’t take terribly long. He didn’t need to. All he needed to do was come down Avery’s throat and walk away without a word.

And when he did that, he felt better.

Though knowing why it made him feel better? That made him feel worse.

-/-

There were, Sirius thought, several advantages to living in the tallest tower of a castle. Excellent views, protection from floods or the noise of the kitchens or the damp of the dungeons. Also it was cool as hell.

But all of that was easy to forget on brutal winter nights when the wind howled like a beast and the windows rattled in their ancient frames. Sirius had just slipped into bed and the cold sheets made his toes curl in protest. There was a faint heat coming off of Horace’s enclosure, but it only served to remind him of how little warmth there was everywhere else.

“This sucks,” Sirius muttered from under the heap of blankets he’d amassed on his own bed. “Where are Peter and James, anyway?”

“James and Lily are having a super secret outlaw date in Hogsmeade. Peter and some Hufflepuff are exchanging body heat somewhere.” Remus was shirtless and his blankets were kicked down towards the foot of the bed. The full moon was in two days, and Remus was always a furnace around those times. They’d developed some half-researched theory about metabolic rates or white blood cells years ago, though none of them knew precisely what it was that caused it. Sirius had never minded, since it was the only time Remus slept without several layers of clothing on.

Sirius let out a snort. “Peter has the right idea.”

Remus made a similar amused grunting sound.

“Maybe I should go hunt down someone to share body heat with.” The sad truth was he already had. Avery was busy that night and his other usual lovers were all either coupled off or unavailable.

Remus didn’t answer right away. “Maybe.”

Sirius looked over at Remus’s bed. He was feeling antsy. There was a restless running through his veins, stronger than caffeine. If James was around, he’d suggest they do something ridiculous and destructive.

But James wasn’t around.

It was just Remus.

Just him and Remus.

And his bed was so, so cold.

“But I’m too lazy to try to find someone,” he said. He’d trained it so the words dripped with a sort of meaning no dictionary would ascribe.

“Mmmm.” Remus’s hum had a sort of trained noncommittal edge. It made Sirius feel brave. 

“Want some company?”

Remus didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Sirius could feel his pulse.

“What are you offering, Black?” Remus asked, his voice guarded.

Sirius let out a laugh that could be either charming or ironic, depending on how he’d later wish to spin it. “Body heat.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Get over here.”

Sirius changed beds, nearly tripping on a sheet in his hurry.

Remus held the covers up for Sirius, who slid onto the mattress quickly and tucked the blankets over himself. It was warm. So warm. “Thanks.”

Remus, who was now so close to him he could see the tiny freckles on his nose, smiled. “No problem.”

And so there they were.

Sirius had no clue what to do next. “So… are you… tired?”

The tiny, premature crow’s feet by Remus’s eyes deepened, even though his lips rose only a little. “No. I’m in bed to have a nice wank.”

The words sent something like anxious pleasure through Sirius’s veins. He still managed a smile. “If you are, you’re good at doing it subtly.”

“Have to be,” Remus said, stretching his arms up lazily. One of them settled back down behind Sirius’s pillow. “I live with three other people.”

The implication there — not that there needed to be much implication, he was a teenaged boy, of course he did _that_ — made the arousal settling in Sirius’s gut even heavier.

He’d never noticed Remus rubbing one out in secret before. He’d heard the tell-tale rustling coming from James’s bed more than once, Peter’s too. But Remus? He’d always figured he’d chosen to do it in the showers or some other space with a touch more privacy. He guessed Moony was just more inherently stealthy than the rest of them. There was no doubt in his mind Remus had heard him indulging more than once.

“How often do you do it here?” Sirius asked without really meaning to. He just wanted to know.

To imagine.

Remus’s smile widened. “Maybe a few times a week. Not as often as you.”

Sirius felt his cheeks heat up. “Ah.”

Remus moved himself more solidly to his side, elbow on the pillow, head resting on his hand like a centerfold. “Generally prefer the showers, especially when the full moon’s coming.”

Sirius moved to mirror Remus’s position, maneuvering slowly so as to avoid any injuries — there were a considerable number of elbows and knees in the small space they were occupying. Eventually he was facing Remus again, and he was presented with a new problem: where to put his free hand?

The place it fell to naturally was the tiny scrap of no man’s land lying between them on the mattress. Even with his fingers curled casually, his knuckles were touching something soft and warm and breathing.

But if Remus had a problem with Sirius’s fingers grazing his stomach, he didn’t say anything. If anything, Sirius could swear he felt his friend pressing — just slightly — into his fingers.

“You’re very subtle,” Sirius said. 

“Maybe you’re just oblivious,” Remus murmured.

Sirius frowned. He moved his hand — a half inch, an experiment.

Remus didn’t react, but his eyes were trained on Sirius.

Sirius moved his hand up a little more, uncurling the fingers in the process, eventually coming to a flat palm splayed across his friend’s chest.

Remus’s eyes met his. Sirius could feel the thrumming of his friend’s heart beneath the warm ( _warm, so warm_ ) skin. He looked down at the bit of bare chest exposed by the faint candle light. Ran the tips of his fingers across Remus’s skin. It felt smooth and young, broken here by a scar, there by a splash of hair. He traced the line of Remus’s collarbone, felt him shiver under his fingertips. He let a thumb flick across the dark nub of a nipple, heard Remus’s intake of breath. He let his fingers follow the trail of hair down towards Remus’s pajama bottoms, stopping at the waistband. Remus’s hips flexed ever so slightly. Imperceptibly.

Enough.

Sirius pushed the blankets away a little, exposing more of Remus, who’s eyes were dark and who’s breathing had quickened.

Sirius brought his lips down to the pulsepoint on Remus’s throat. Remus let a long breath out through the nose.

Sirius kissed down to his chest, placing chaste pecks across the mess of scars there. He ran the flat of his tongue across a nipple, then bit down on it quickly in a somewhat sick parody of the move Avery had pulled on him the other day. Remus’s back arched under his lips.

He explored Moony’s chest, licking and kissing and biting. Waiting for a negative sound, or a hand pushing him away, or a no.

That never happened.

Instead Remus’s hands began to explore Sirius. His fingers scratched at his back. His nails were running across his skin. He traced the line of his spine, the shapes of his arms. Eventually, his hands came to Sirius’s face, pulling him away from his stomach. Sirius braced himself for the rejection. The _I’m not interested_. The slow down. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Remus brought their lips together. Pleasure radiated from Sirius’s mouth to every extremity on his body. For the first time that day, he was truly warm.

Sirius smiled against Remus’s lips, fingers going to the soft waves at the nape of his neck. He trailed his kisses down Remus’s throat, placing a few love bites as he went.

He’d ended up hovering above Remus, supporting himself on one hand pressed into the mattress at Remus’s side. As he moved to get himself more comfortable, he inadvertently pressed his crotch against Moony’s.

He froze. Moved slightly back, eyes searching Remus’s for some indication that it was okay to move there.

Moony answered with a flexing of his hips.

Sirius bit his lip and started moving against Remus in a slow, steady rhythm, savoring the friction between their bodies.

“Fuck, Sirius,” Remus gasped at one point.

Loud footsteps outside the dorm gave them just enough warning. Sirius leapt off the bed with the reflexes of a seasoned prankster and slipped beneath his covers before Peter could even throw the door open and proudly announced that they would not believe _what he was just doing with and who._

 _No, Peter,_ Sirius thought, adjusting himself under the covers. _You wouldn’t believe_ what _I was just doing and with_ who.

Remus shot him an uncomfortable look, said something dismissive to Peter, and rolled over.

Peter went to bed shortly after and Sirius tried to handle his lingering problem as discreetly as he could. His ears were trained on Moony’s bed, but he couldn’t hear anything.

Shortly after they turned the lights off, Remus got up and went to the bathroom.

Sirius could hear the shower running.

-/-

He still liked girls, and that was sort of a relief.

Octavia was riding him. She’d tracked him down and made some suggestions and he found a pretty girl whispering dirty things in his ear to be just as exciting as before he’d learned first hand the various joys (and horrors) of cock.

And so they found a discreet spot (lovely thing about schools in old castles — there are so very many discreet spots. Sirius was considering getting some card to see how many of them he’d defiled. He figured he’d already made bongo, or bango or whatever that muggle thing Remus had mentioned that time was).

He still liked breasts, round and soft with pretty pink nipples he could pinch and lick and suck and bite. Soft female stomachs and hips he could stroke and grab. Light little sighs and gasps and moans, long hair and hairless jaws. He liked eating pussy precisely as much as he found he enjoyed sucking cock and pressing into the delicious tight heat of a woman was still one of his all time favorite things to do.

They had a nice little romp and Sirius enjoyed himself — and enjoyed enjoying himself. They were familiar with each other’s bodies and spent a lovely little while afterwards cuddling and stroking each other’s skin and kissing shoulders and collarbones and chatting about this class or that professor or that student’s stupid new hair cut. They put their clothes back on and went back to their respective days. A small, conspiratorial smile exchanged in the great hall that evening was the only indication anything had happened.

But Sirius was grateful to her for the sex, beyond the obvious reasons. It didn’t have the exciting but somewhat soul withering quality sex with Avery had, and it didn’t feel like stepping maybe a bit to close to a fire like touching Remus had. It felt safe, and he needed that right then.

But when Remus gave him an equally conspiratorial look moments later, Sirius’s stomach dropped.

Unpleasant thoughts about infidelity came up, but he batted them away.

Wanting to sleep with Remus was fine. Wanting to sleep with _just_ Remus was dangerous.

-/-

“So we’ll finish up the potions work and that should be the end of it,” James said, checking something off his list with an elegant flicking motion.

Remus rolled his eyes, his gaze catching Sirius’s. They smiled like there was a secret between them, which there was. Remus was looking away before Sirius could say anything. Not that there was anything to say. Not in mixed company.

“I stocked up on chocolate last time I was in Hogsmeade, and Peter got his aunt to send some more of that ointment you like, so we should be good there. Sirius?”

“Mmmm?”

“Hot water bottles? Could you get some?”

“I got five a while ago,” Sirius said, a little proud of himself. He’d bought them almost immediately after the last full moon.

Remus, who’s cheeks were flushed as they always were during their monthly meetings, frowned down at the table. “I don’t need _five_. You should have saved your money.”

“Eventually you’ll need all of them,” Sirius said, prim and certain and protective in a way he didn’t get to be the rest of the month. “Let us take care of you.”

He and Remus maintained eye contact for longer than was strictly necessary, and Sirius was the one to break it. He shook his hair casually as he could from his ponytail, not tucking it behind his ears as was his usual habit. His cheeks felt warm.

-/-

Sirius had always allowed himself to admire Remus’s body — the way his shoulders tapered down to a trim waist, the surprising curve of his bum, the graceful line of his neck and length of his legs — in other fleeting moments. He’d indulge in the occasional glance when Remus stepped out of the shower. Let himself look when he changed. Allowed himself the pleasure of appreciating Moony’s beauty in their “domestic life.” Even before the kiss (which they still hadn’t acknowledged out loud), his eyes gravitated towards Remus, in ways so unambiguous that he had to dart his gaze away whenever he thought someone else was about to catch him looking. He loved looking at Moony, long before he let himself acknowledge why.

But the second they stepped foot in the Shrieking Shack, he didn’t let that part of himself to come out, even though the quiet mornings after the transformation were the best time to ogle Remus. Remus hated his body, and didn’t like flaunting it to others. He hunched over and hid behind curtains when he changed. More often than not, he emerged from the bathroom fully clothed, even though the steam from the shower was still wafting behind him. Even when he was so hot he couldn’t wear his usual jumper and baggy pajama bottoms to bed, he covered himself with sheets and took advantage of their dorm room’s weak lighting.

But every morning after the full moon, Sirius saw Remus completely naked in full light. And even though it was the same body, part of him refused to let it count.

He’d learned early that compartmentalization was an essential survival tactic for werewolves. Remus refused to think that the creature which tore itself out of his body every month was him. It was just a beast that attacked him twelve times a year. From the moment he entered the shack to the moment he left, he was not Remus John Lupin. He couldn’t be. And so for years Sirius looked at him with clinical eyes when he transformed, from the brutal first moments when his body contorted and the wolf arrived, to the bloody aftermath. He’d usually transform back to a human and heal the cuts he could, then he’d duck out with Peter and James, often leaving just moments before Madam Pomfrey’s arrival. Remus would be his patient. He wouldn’t see him as anything but a collection of injuries, a creature whose suffering he needed to ease.

But that morning, damn him, he was looking.

James was helping him tend to a big gash on Remus’s shoulder’ and Sirius’s eyes were studying his chest. His hips. His cock.

It was large, thick, and flushed looking. Risen in teenage-typical morning hardness despite the injuries scattered around Remus’s body. His penis was the only part of Remus that bore absolutely no scars. The wolf — separate from Remus was they all maintained it was — refused to attack him there. 

He wondered if it would taste like Avery’s. 

_Merlin_. 

He trained his eyes back on the injury, ignoring the heat he was feeling in his core. The man was bleeding, and Sirius was gawking at him like some perv with a magazine.

James gave him a slightly concerned look. Sirius just started working on a cut on Remus’s jaw.

Now was not the time.

-/-

Sirius couldn’t get Remus alone until some time the next night. Until then, it had all been shy glances and awkward smiles that made Sirius’s whole body feel warm. Then cold. Then warm again.

But eventually he had Moony cornered.

There he was, back against a tapestry in some abandoned hallway (Merlin, did Hogwarts have a lot of them), looking at Sirius expectantly.

“The kiss,” he said, all other words having left him.

“The kiss,” Remus agreed.

“It was… good?” _Merlin_. He sounded like a monkey or something.

“It was good,” Remus agreed, biting his lip.

“Can we do it again?”

Remus smiled and pulled him in. The wall they were leaning against was freezing even through the ancient tapestry, and the angle kinda hurt and Sirius had to balance a hand on a frigid, rough stone. It was lovely.

And strange, also strange. But he didn’t mind that so much. Things hadn’t been _normal_ between them for some time, not since The Prank, as he’d always thought of it. Their friendship had broken after that and when eventually it healed, it wasn’t healed back to the same thing. It was something broken but intimate, something new. They understood each other more on the other side of that hurt, but they couldn’t ever be _normal_ again. Their options were good weird and bad weird.

Kissing Moony was good weird. It was very good weird.

-/-

The firecrackers had been Remus’s idea. Simple muggle things he’d smuggled into the castle after the last holiday. He’d given each of them a handful, threaded together by a green string that formed a flimsy sort of spine which made the red cylinders look strangely anatomical. 

“Alright,” Remus whispered, looking down the banister at the small group of studying Slytherins. “Assume the position.”

They each held their string of firecrackers out over the bannister, limp and red like four mice after a visit from a cat. In unison, they pulled the cheap plastic muggle lighters Remus had given them from the pockets of their robes, and lit the fuse.

They let go.

Shrieks mixed with banging sounds below them as the Slytherins tried to understand what was going on. The four of them had already hidden behind James’s cloak, enjoying the chaos below from a safe distance.

The Slytherins started flailing spells about, certain that someone had just dropped some sort of hexed item on them. That was the brilliance of the prank, Remus had explained earlier. It’s just some gunpowder. Just a stupid muggle thing.

The firecrackers stopped seconds after they started, and the Marauders watched from their hiding spot as the Slytherins started dusting the singed red casings off their notebooks.

Sirius had ended up right next to Remus under the cloak, its size forcing them to crouch shoulder to shoulder. Moony’s eyes were trained on the Slytherins, and one in particular.

Remus’s gaze followed Avery as he dusted off his shoulders — dusted with gunpowder, but not looking too damaged — and walked down the hall.

-/-

“Shouldn’t — you — be — in class?” Sirius managed to get out between kisses.

“Maybe,” Remus said against Sirius’s throat before going back in.

They were pressed against the back of a closet that used to contain… something. At that point it just had a broom — a regular one — and a single candle stub Sirius had accidentally stepped on when Remus had all but thrown him into the small space. He was going to have to check his heel for wax later.

Remus’s hand was venturing dangerously south. He started tugging Sirius’s shirt out of his trousers.

Sirius gasped as Remus started palming him through the fabric. “Is this okay?” Remus asked.

“Yeah — _yeah_.”

He could feel Remus’s lips smiling against his. Moony’s fingers went to Sirius’s belt.

Sirius kept kissing Remus. He ran his thumb back and forth over the raised skin of a scar on the back of his neck.

Remus’s fingers wrapped around Sirius. Sirius let out a little mew he wasn’t particularly proud of.

But then Remus’s hand started moving and he found he didn’t particularly care.

Sirius’s hips flexed into his grip, and the two started moving so Sirius was fucking his hand.

Remus pulled his lips away and looked down at Sirius’s cock, which was poking out from his trousers and pants. The flushed head bobbed in and out of view as Remus’s hand worked over it.

“You’re so beautiful,” Remus whispered into the hot air between them.

Sirius kissed him again. He didn’t last long. Remus held him close through the orgasm.

Sirius got on his knees and undid Remus’s fly, looking up through his lashes for permission.

He got it.

He started servicing Remus with his mouth, thankful then for all the practice he’d gotten with Avery. Remus seemed to like a lot of the same things, which was reassuring. Though he tasted different. Maybe a bit more bitter.

After, they kept kissing for a while. A long while. It was dark by the time they left.

-/-

Avery bit his lip. Pressed his hips back, inviting.

Sirius took the invitation, fingers (thoroughly lubricated) stretching out Avery’s tight heat.

He took his time with it, enjoying the little gasps he earned when he did something right.

Waited for a breathy, “just fuck me already.” Lined himself up. Pushed in.

And there it was. The moment. He was fucking Avery.

It felt good, he thought as he started to flex his hips. Tight and hot and exactly as he figured it would.

It didn’t take long.

Avery seemed to want a few kisses and something like cuddles after, but eventually he walked away, his gait a little off.

Remus greeted him with a smile when Sirius entered the dormitory. Sirius muttered something and walked straight to the shower, certain he smelled like Avery.

-/-

“Aagh!”

Remus danced around the courtyard, hands reaching back into his coat and trying to extract the snow Sirius had trickled down his spine. He was flapping about like a particularly graceless flightless bird, shouting curses that made a passing gaggle of second years giggle into their hands. 

Remus glared at Sirius. The darkness in his eyes made him shiver.

“You’ll pay for that, Black.”

-/-

“Aaaa— _aaaagh_ ,” Avery’s head dropped down below his shoulders. From Sirius’s angle, it almost looked like he’d beheaded him.

The impression was lost as soon as Avery regained control of his neck. They made eye contact in the hazy old mirror they’d been fucking against.

Sirius looked away.

He eased himself out of Avery, stepping over to a nearby sink. It took some convincing, but eventually the old pipes brought up some water.

The abandoned bathroom was a new spot for them. What it lacked in comfort, it more than made up for in novelty — mirrors everywhere, tons of places to lean against and bend over and hold on to.

“Aw— what the fuck?” Avery was examining the mark Sirius had left on his neck. “No hickeys, remember?”

“Sorry, I forgot,” Sirius said, not feeling or sounding remotely sorry. He zipped his fly up.

Avery pulled his wand from his abandoned robes and cast a quick spell to cover the mark up.

As Sirius strode by, he cast a counterspell, leaving the hickey in place.

Avery’s voice came heavy and sure from the behind Sirius as he left: “you’ll pay for that, Black.”

-/-

He really ought to get credit for this, he figured. He was using at least half a book of charms to get the damn thing to work.

Maybe after it was all over, he’d show his work to Flitwick, get some extra credit.

Sirius chuckled to himself as he fiddled with the camera, imagining how the diminutive charms professor would react to his little _project_.

He waved his wand and watched as the camera disappeared.

Sirius smiled and pushed down the discomfort in his gut. He’d been feeling uncomfortable all morning. All week, really. He wasn’t sure why. He’d dismissed it as nerves. If Avery saw the camera, he was a dead man. 

But he’d risked more for less, and he’d put so much effort into this. Backing out now would be an act of cowardice. 

He was doing this for the right reasons. He was doing this for the right reasons. This was for a good cause. _He was doing this for the right reasons._

The door opened, and Avery wrapped his arms around him, and he pushed the thoughts aside.

The deed was done quickly. They weren’t the type to take their time with one another. Awkwardly, if he was being honest. Sirius pulled and pushed Avery around, trying to angle their actions towards the camera so it could get a good shot of what they were doing. Avery protested a few times when Sirius shifted their hips the wrong way, but Sirius was fairly sure he hadn’t caught on.

Avery left shortly after, and Sirius waited a little while before jumping over to the camera and taking the film out. He took his time putting his clothes back on before slipping the film canister into his pocket and heading out.

“Shit!” he jumped back. “Moony. What are you doing here?”

Remus was leaning against the hall across from the door, an unreadable expression on his face. “Hey,” he said after a moment, scratching the back of his neck. “Uh… I wanted to talk.”

“Uh,” the film was burning a hole in Sirius’s pocket and he felt sticky under his clothes. He was certain he was drenched in _eau de Avery_. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Look, I know that we agreed that we’d never use the map to spy on each other...” Remus began.

Sirius felt his pulse quicken. “Wait—”

“And that’s not what I was doing, I swear!” Remus held his hands out in front of him like he was surrendering something. “I was trying to avoid someone, so I took the map and I was trying to find that person and I just saw you in this room… with Avery.”

“Right,” Sirius said, trying to slow his breathing.

“And at first I figured you were getting in a fight and I was worried you’d do something stupid, so I thought I’d come and help you, but I passed Avery on the way and from the looks of it… and you…” Remus swallowed. “Look, it’s none of my business what the two of you get up to. It’s just…”

“Remus…”

“I don’t mind, okay?” At this point it sounded like he was lecturing himself. “I don’t want you to think I came over because I was jealous. Am jealous. Or anything… I just… I just… I mean,” he’d started pacing. “He’s not a good person, Sirius! And I know you know that, but he’s really, _really_ not a good person. You can have whoever you want, so I don’t see why you’re fucking him. I mean, I know he’s not horrible to look at, but there’s better looking people… so do you… like him or something?”

Panic stabbed through Sirius with strength he couldn’t make sense of. “No, Remus, no, that’s not what I’m… no. I don’t like him. That’s not it.”

“Okay,” Remus said. “So… seriously, why? I thought you hated him? Is it just for the hate sex? You know what, no, it’s none of my business. I’m sorry I even came over here. I’ll let you… yeah, I’ll go.” And Remus started down the hallway.

“Wait!” Sirius said, chasing after him. “Remus, wait. I don’t like him. I’m really not that attracted to him. Well, I mean, maybe a little, but that’s not why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

“You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Remus informed the floor. “Really, you don’t have to.”

“I want to, though. Can we just talk?”

Remus looked up at him, and the thinly veiled pain in his eyes made Sirius want to toss himself off the astronomy tower. “Okay, what do you want to say?”

“Avery’s my project,” Sirius said, pulling the film from his pocket.

“Your super secret project?” Remus frowned. “How?”

“I’ve been seducing him so I could obtain evidence of his… preferences…” Sirius smirked. “I’m going to send his parents a letter with the pictures.”

Sirius was expecting Remus to look relieved, or cocksure, or maybe a little disapproving. His usual range of emotions. He wasn’t expecting horror.

“What?” Remus whispered. “You… you’re… _fucking what_?”

“I think you heard me, Moony,” Sirius said, straightening. “I’m going to teach the squeaky little fuck a lesson.”

“You can’t do that,” Remus said, stepping back, his eyes bright with disgust. “You… fucking Merlin, Sirius. What’s _wrong_ with you?”

There was that face again, the one Remus had when Sirius didn’t fit neatly into his particular moral boundaries. It made Sirius want to punch something.

Instead, he got quiet. “Wrong with me?” Sirius hissed, tucking the film away. “What’s wrong with _you_? Why do you care so much about what happens to him? You just told me he’s a horrible person.”

“His parents believe that homosexuals are even worse than muggle borns or werewolves! If they find out they’ll toss him out on the street! He’ll have nowhere to go!”

“It’s what he deserves for being such a piece of shit.”

“No one deserves that, Sirius! How could you even consider such a thing?”

Fury and shame whirled and bubbled in Sirius’s stomach like some poison brewing. When he spoke, he felt the acid of it on his tongue. “He’s a bully, and a prick, and all the bad things in the world. Why do you care what happens to him? Maybe he’ll drop out and he won’t be our problem any more. When he graduates, he’s probably going to enlist with the Death Eaters or some shit. If they aren’t willing to take him, that’s one less Death Eater to worry about. He’s the fucking _enemy_. You should be congratulating me on coming up with a way to take care of him.”

Remus let out a derisive laugh. “Good job, Sirius. You’ve found a way to fuck someone into irrelevance. I can’t believe you’d stoop this fucking low… Do you even like men? Did you even want to touch me? Merlin, were you using me as _practice_ or something?”

Sirius stepped back. He felt cold. “What? No!”

But Remus was already on a roll. “That’s it, isn’t it? You knew I’d be easy pickings so you just snatched me up. I’ve been so stupid,” he let out a humorless laugh. “I’d expect that kind of bullshit from Avery, but from you? I thought you’d had some standards, at least. When he told me he didn’t want to see me anymore, that he’d found someone else, I’d felt happy for him. Well, happy enough. I can’t believe he actually meant fucking _you_.”

It made sense, and there had been fleeting uncomfortable moments when Sirius suspected Remus was the Mystery Man, but the confirmation of it all made him even angrier. “ _You_ were fucking Avery?” he hissed. “Are you kidding me? Why would you do that?”

“Why do you _think_?” Remus hissed. “How many people do you think want this?” Remus gestured at himself. “It’s hard enough to find a bloke who likes blokes. When you look like me you take whatever the fuck you can get.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Oh for fucks sake, Remus. Would you stop it with the fucking pity party? You aren’t ugly. You’ve never been ugly. You’re fucking beautiful but you’re so desperate to feel like a pariah that you don’t let anyone get near you! Was fucking Avery like some sort of self harm bullshit? And here you are, lecturing me about standards,” Sirius laughed, hating himself even as he said the words.

“I fucked Avery because I wanted to,” Remus said, voice tight and dangerous. “I didn’t whore myself off for a goddamned _prank_.”

The words were like a slap to the face. “This isn’t some prank, Mooney. This is justice.”

“No, Sirius. It’s fucking not. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care who they are. You don’t _do_ that to people. If you have a shred of decency left, toss that shit in a fire.” He made a disgusted sort of wave towards the pocket Sirius had stored the film in.

“I’m not going to do that,” Sirius said, glaring at him. “I’ve put in too much work to throw this all away now.”

Remus just shook his head and walked away.

Sirius stood there for some time, seething and feeling dirtier than he’d ever felt before.

-/-

Fights among the Marauders were rare and usually short and open to much speculation.

It wasn’t long before the whole school was whispering about it. It was worse than when Peter and Sirius weren’t talking. It was worse than when James sat apart from them for three days. It was worse than The Great Exploding Snap Spat of ’73. It was even worse than that stretch of fifth year when they all seemed furious at Sirius.

Everyone knew something between Remus and Sirius had gone sour. That was always the worst, really. But they’d come around, everyone knew. Their fights rarely lasted more than a month.

-/-

The full moon came three weeks later. Sirius slipped in as usual, despite what James and Peter suggested. 

His dog form and Remus’s wolf form spent the night frolicking in the forest, as they always had. It was easier to just be a dog, Sirius thought as he and Remus raced each other among the trees. Sometimes he wished he could do that all the time.

He left in the morning, before Remus woke up.

-/-

Dear Mr and — 

Sir and Madam — 

To Whom it my Concern — 

Your son has recently been caught engaging in activities — 

Your son was recently discovered with the notorious blood traitor Sirius Black — 

Your son is a poof — 

Your son — 

Your son — 

Sirius tossed the parchment into the fire. He watched it curl in on itself, like a man being beaten folding himself into a fetal position.

Sirius half wanted to curl up into one himself.

He’d talked a Ravenclaw into giving him the key to the newspaper’s dark room. The lurid photographs were hidden in his Absolute Worst Case Scenario Super Mega Backup Cubby, which no one else knew about. All he needed to do was write the letter to accompany them. That task had always seemed the easiest step, but he was running through parchment faster than Moony had when he was prepping for his OWLs.

Writing out what had happened — what he had done — it made him feel like a human sized tower of slime. Surely it wasn’t _that_ bad, it just looked bad on paper.

And to Remus.

But fuck it. Fuck Remus. Sirius didn’t have to explain himself. He was an agent of karma. He wasn’t going to be bossed around like that.

Sirius shoved his parchment and quill back into his bag, which he abandoned beside his favorite chair in the common room. Everyone else was asleep. And no one would dare steal from him anyway. Not that he was thinking of that, or much of anything, as he stalked out of the room.

He asked a ghost to slip into the Slytherin common room and deliver a message for him, then he went to a favorite side room, and waited.

“Having ghosts help you pull now? That’s got to be a new low,” Avery said as he strolled into the room.

“Shut up, Avery,” Sirius said through clenched teeth.

“Ooooh, we’re a bit touchy today, aren’t we? You’re the one who sent for me, love. Why all the ire?” Avery’s face twisted in some sad parody of a pout. “You sad because you broke up with your boyfriend? I really do miss that tight little ass —”

Sirius grabbed Avery’s shoulder and pushed him down onto his knees. Avery went down easily, chuckling. “Manners, Black. Where are your manners? I know you’re a pathetic blood traitor, but you do come from a good family.”

“So do you, Avery,” Sirius said as he undid his belt, eyes cast down on him with that special type of derision that can only be bred into a person, “and which one of us accepted a call to suck cock in the middle of the night?”

Avery didn’t say anything.

Sirius let his head fall back as warm heat wrapped itself around his half-hard cock. Avery’s tongue ran along his underside as he worked on Sirius, no doubt saying all the things his current predicament prevented him from saying. Sirius pretended like Avery wasn’t thinking nasty things about him and his. He pretended like he was receiving the attentions of someone who cared about him.

He pretended like it was Remus’s tongue circling his tip. Like it was Remus’s hand moving up and down his shaft. Like it was Remus’s breath he felt against the most sensitive skin on his body.

He tangled his fingers in Avery’s hair, and the texture was almost close enough he could fool himself. Remus’s was just a bit curlier. He’d been growing it out a little, Sirius remembered, the waves were so defined he could move his fingers perfectly along the grooves if he was careful…

Avery was more experienced than Remus, that much was clear. He could take it deeper, hold down longer. He was cleaner, precise. Practiced.

But still, if Sirius closed his eyes really hard, held his breath long enough that his thoughts got a bit fuzzy. If he thought about green eyes and freckles and lanky limbs that went on for miles. If he worked at it, he could pretend it was Remus.

He pretended it was Remus who swallowed him down when he finished. And when Avery flipped him over and pressed him against a table, he pretended that was Remus too. When he fingered him open and pressed inside, it was Remus. When he finished and walked away, that could be Remus too.

Sirius stayed in that room for a long while, outside of himself. He woke up in his own bed, but couldn’t remember walking there.

-/-

“So… lover’s quarrel?” James asked, stooping his head as he tried to reach his toes. He never was terribly good at the pre-practice stretches.

Sirius glanced up from somewhere around his knee. This was the first James had mentioned their fight. “What?”

“You and Remus. This row you’re having. What’s causing it? Lily thinks you said something stupid. You break up or something?”

“We weren’t — aren’t — never were dating, Prongs. It’s just a little tiff,” Sirius sat up and switched which leg was stretched out. “He’ll get over it.”

“Oh, so it’s his problem?” James questioned, his voice smug and self satisfied in a way that made Sirius silently consider aiming the bludgeor towards his face during practice.

“Just stay out of it, James,” Sirius said, his eyes scanning the grey, raw expanse of the field. “It’ll all be over soon enough.”

-/-

Sirius finally cobbled together a good enough letter:

Dear Sir and Madam,

Your son likes to have sex with men.

Do with this information what you must.

Signed,

Anonymous

It wasn’t his best work.

He tucked the letter into his pocket and ventured out to his secret hiding spot, which was located behind a wall closing off an old hidden pathway. There was a loose brick on one side, and to his knowledge no one else knew about it.

Except apparently someone did, because it was gone.

Sirius’s heart hammered in his chest as he stared at the empty space that days before had contained the small parcel of damning images he’d developed. He started running back towards the main part of the building.

-/-

Remus was alone in their bedroom, thank Merlin.

“What did you do with them?!?” Sirius demanded, slamming the door behind them.

Remus looked up from his book, glaring at Sirius. “Do with what?”

“The pictures. They’re gone.”

Remus’s eyes went wide. “You actually developed them?”

“As if you didn’t know!” Sirius snapped. Fuck, he was starting to sound like a character from a cheap novel.

“Sirius,” Remus said, standing. “I didn’t know. And I didn’t take them, though if I knew you’d printed them and I knew where they were, I would have done. Who else could have taken them?”

Remus was sounding very calm and sensible, which was making Sirius more annoyed. “Anyone! They were in a hole in the wall. I thought I was the only person who knew about that!’”

“The one behind that portrait of the woman and the pear tree?”

“So you do know about it!”

Remus rolled his eyes. “I know it’s too obvious a hiding spot. Great, then. Our list of subjects is now just, ‘fucking everyone.’”

Sirius wanted to make some indignant comment, but the slight flush of pleasure that came from Remus’s use of the word _our_ prevented him from saying anything. “Fucking anyone who’d check behind that wall and find that brick. You overestimate how curious people are.”

“You underestimate how bored they are.”

“You just want to lecture me.”

“Losing your fucking revenge porn deserves a lecture! Fuck, Sirius. We’ve almost graduated. How could you not think of a better spot?”

“It’s a good spot!” Sirius crossed his arms.

“Obviously not,” Remus said, but he was pulling a jumper on. “C’mon. Let’s investigate.”

Sirius probably should have thanked him, but he was scared that if he acknowledged what they were doing, Remus would back out.

They went to the scene of the crime, no conversation passing between them. That used to be his favorite thing about them, the way they could exist in comfortable silence. But the silence just then wasn’t comfortable. It felt like the moments before a bomb went off.

Remus started cycling through the various spells that could be used to find lost things, spells Sirius knew but hadn’t thought to cast at the moment.

After the third incantation, a small path was illuminated, heading further into the closed off tunnel.

They both stared down at it.

“Well shit,” Remus said, eyebrows raised.

“This is the one we found third year,” Sirius said, “it’s collapsed almost completely at the end, and we didn’t risk it.”

“Someone did,” Remus observed.

Sirius nodded, and started heading down the path. He could hear Remus behind him.

The path started narrowing quickly, a general downward slope suggesting something large and important had collapsed within the wall some time long ago. They walked, then stooped, then crouched, then crawled, then Sirius was flat on his stomach, squeezing his body forward to follow the path.

He could see some sort of light at the end of the tight space. Something dim, but something there.

At last he was able to drag himself through the end of it, and brushed the dirt from his robes as he looked around the room.

It appeared to be some type of scaffolding, ancient, with creaking boards that protested under his weight. There was a hole in the center of the old floor, and through it he could see what the dim source of the lighting was: a torch affixed do the wall of the space below.

“What is that?” Remus asked as he walked over to Sirius’s side, running a hand across his cheek and spreading the dirt that had smudged there. Sirius’s hand twitched, helpless to his instinctual desire to brush the dirt away himself, but he managed to stop himself.

He looked back down into the space below them. “I’m not sure… is that a teapot?”

There was a strange collection of things illuminated in the torch’s flickering light. A teapot — red polka dot, and broken, by the looks of it — a single glove, a single boot, a single trainer, half a chess set, half a chess board.

“Is someone just collecting random crap? Lost and broken things?” Remus wondered, leaning forward to get a better look.

“Lost and Broken Things would be a great band title, Mooney. You ever think of starting a—!”

His sentence was cut short by the sound of the boards beneath their feet cracking and the two boys tumbling down towards the collection of crap.

“ _Arresto Momentum_!” Sirius shouted, grabbing Remus and flailing his wand about as they fell.

The spell cushioned the blow, but there was nothing comfortable about laying down on a strange horde of semiprecious garbage as a fidgety werewolf with more elbows and knees than felt strictly necessary moved heaven and earth to get away from you.

One of those elbows connected with Sirius’s side in Remus’s desperate scramble to get out of anything remotely resembling an embrace with him. Sirius let out a little grunt, and Remus paused, like maybe he was going to apologize. And then he didn’t.

Sirius eventually managed to sit up, hand stroking his side in a weak attempt to massage the pain away. A teacup tumbled down the side of the pile.

“Who do you think is collecting all of this?” Sirius asked, opening and discarding a broken umbrella in a single motion.

“A house elf, maybe?” Remus suggested, examining a horsehair brush missing quite a bit of its horsehair. “This looks like the type of stuff you’d find while cleaning. And it all looks fairly recent.” He started flipping through a notebook.

Sirius found a cache of common chocolate frog cards, and started sifting through them, in the vain hope that it had one of the ones he was missing.

“Sirius?” Remus asked.

“Mmmmm?”

“The good news is I found your porn. The bad news is I’ve seen your porn.”

Sirius’s head snapped up, and he felt his face heat as Remus, face a similar color, flipped through a small pile of pictures.

Sirius snatched them from his hand. “Thank you,” he said, rather primly.

Remus’s jaw was tight. “Great, so now we can go back to our beds and you can go back to ruining people’s lives and I can finish my transfiguration homework. Happy ending for everyone but Avery, his friends and his family.”

Sirius stuffed the pictures into their envelope and shoved them in his pocket. “Yes, everyone but the Death Eater and his Death Eater parents and his Death Eater friends will be _just fucking fine._ ”

“And his Death Eater six year old sister, and his Death Eater three year old brother. And their Death Eater cat, and their Death Eater house elf, whom only Avery treats well…”

“Back when you thought I was just fucking him because I wanted to, he was a horrible person and I was supposed to stay away. Now that you know I was trying to put him in his place, suddenly he’s some sort of humanitarian? What do you want from me?”

“Basic human decency?” Remus said with a dramatic shrug. “Self awareness. If you were actually like us, you wouldn’t be doing this sort of shit. Merlin, Sirius, don’t you know this is the worst thing you can do to someone like him? Someone like me?”

Sirius really, really, _really_ wanted to kick something. The teapot made a satisfying sounds as it connected with the wall and broke into dozens of pieces. “Like us? What are you going on about now?”

“Queers. Fucking poofs, whatever. We look out for each other, alright? The whole wide world wants to fuck us over, and so we look out for each other. Playing like us as if we’re some sort of disposable toy, and ruining someone’s life just because you can… how can you _do_ that?”

“How can you defend him, still? After everything he’s done? And by the fucking way, I resent this notion that I don’t enjoy cock just as much as you do! I _like_ you, Remus. I’ve always liked you! I’ve been staring at your ass since we were thirteen. I’ve been having dreams about you since we were fifteen! Why can’t you accept that I wanted you? Want you,” he corrected, eyes falling down at that admission.

Remus took a moment to reply. And Sirius was too scared to look at him.

“If,” Remus began, that single word slung with so much irony Sirius could feel the weight of it on his skin, “you did like me, and men in general. And if you wanted to… pursue something… anything… with me, or with any man. You can’t send his parents those pictures. I won’t be able to respect you after. And anyone like me… or like you … who learns about what you did won’t be able to respect you either. There’s a line, Sirius. And I know you don’t seem to understand why this line exists, but it does. Trust me. Just burn them. There are other ways to get back at him, better ways. Ways that don’t compromise who you are.”

Sirius frowned. “So it’s an ultimatum, then? I get rid of this, or the fight never ends?”

Remus’s face twisted up in some undecipherable emotion, then settled again. “I’m not exactly a prize, but I wouldn’t be able to, well, _be_ with you if I knew about the pictures.”

“But you were able to fuck a Death Eater? That wasn’t a problem?”

“Fucking a Death Eater was about convenience and desperation. I was lost and scared and in love with one of my best friends…”

Something hot flashed through Sirius. “You were in love with me?”

Remus’s cheeks were bright red but he still managed to look derisive. “No, Sirius, I was in love with James.”

“Wait, real—”

“No,” Remus spat, “not _really_ , of course I was in love with you! And what was I supposed to do about it? I didn’t know you liked men, liked me… all that was available to me was Avery. And it wasn’t horrible. Sometimes I wish it was, but it wasn’t. So yeah, I kept doing it. But it was always separate from everything else. I never used it as a weapon. And that’s what was important.”

Sirius didn’t get it. He should of ( _should, should, should_ ), he knew. But he didn’t. But he also knew what his priorities were.

“Alright, alright,” Sirius held his hands up in surrender, “I’ll burn them, but just know that I’m doing it for you, not for anyone else.” He pulled the envelope from his pocket and set it on the stone floor, far from any of the other debris at the bottom of the room. “ _Incendio._ ”

The envelope caught, and the images flashed briefly before him — glimpses of skin and contact and movement — before they were gone, and all that remained was a sad heap of grey ash.

Remus’s eyes were also trained on the spot on the floor, his shoulders visibly relaxing.

“It’s going to take you a little while to really be okay with me again, isn’t it?” Sirius asked.

“You still really don’t get why it was wrong?” Remus asked.

“I don’t know, maybe?” Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose. “Thing is, if there was still room for me to sink in my parents’ view, I’m not sure Avery wouldn’t have done something similar.”

Remus shrugged. “Maybe. Probably not, I think that might have been too much even for him. But that’s not really the point. If we don’t hold ourselves to a higher standard than Death Eaters, then what’s the point?”

“Didn’t know you were such an ethical philosopher,” Sirius muttered, kicking aside a half deflated football. 

“Didn’t know you were so wholly uninterested in ethics.”

Sirius sighed. He was so sick of this conversation.

“Sorry. That might be a bit much.” Remus looked down at the ground. “Thank you for doing that. I know you put a lot of … effort in.”

Sirius just made a grunting sound and studied the heap of ashes.

“Like… those angles couldn’t have been comfortable.”

“They weren’t.”

“And you think Avery didn’t notice?”

“Never let on that he did,” Sirius said with a shrug.

“I mean… do you think _he_ might be planning something?” Remus’s voice had that soft quality it tended towards when he was thinking about schemes.

“What, you think that he has a prank planned for my prank? Do you think he’s out pranking me? Dear god, I hope we never see the day…”

Remus let out a little snorting laugh, and the weight Sirius had been feeling on his chest eased slightly.

“I think I’m done with him, really. The sex wasn’t _that_ good.”

“I dunno,” Remus wrinkled his nose. “The sex was rather good.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Sirius admitted with a shrug. “I’m sure we’d do better. You have softer hands.”

“He does have weirdly rough hands,” Remus said.

“And that face he makes when he coming?” Sirius did a loose impression of it.

“Oh my god, I forgot about that face,” Remus laughed. “Though yours is pretty bad too. Not sure you’re really in a place to be judging.”

“What are you talking about? I’m a veritable sex god.”

“Right. How could I forget?”

“I’ll ensure it,” Sirius said, stepping closer to Remus. “If you let me.”

And a tension came to the air, one Sirius wished he could have pushed away. He just _had_ to do that, didn’t he? Couldn’t have kept going with the laughs?

Remus’s eyes went down to his lips, then back up to meet his. “What else would you do to me?” he asked, voice low. _Fuck_.

Sirius closed the gap between them, putting a hand on Remus’s cheek. “I’d toss you down on this pile of rubbish and have you until you forgot Avery’s name.”

“You make it all sound so romantic,” Remus said, though there wasn’t enough sarcasm in the world to conceal the lustful look in his eyes.

“Can we not be fighting anymore?” Sirius asked. “I’d really love it if we weren’t fighting anymore.”

“We’ll call it a ceasefire,” Remus said, and he brought their lips together.

It felt like coming home, which was scary. It felt like keeping a promise, which was comforting. Mostly it just felt good weird. Good weird after weeks of bad weird. It was like the sun had come out.

His fingers went to the buttons on Remus’s shirt, clumsily exposing more, and more, and more skin. He sighed against Remus’s mouth when he finally got the thing off, his fingers going to feel the planes of Remus’s back, heavily textured with scars. He traced a long one up and down Remus’s spine as Remus started kissing his neck. Remus’s hand found his shirt and yanked it open, buttons flying. Sirius smiled against his lips, letting Remus push the fabric away and let it fall to the floor.

Sirius’s hands went to the buckle of Remus’s belt, yanking it off and tossing it back into the room. Sirius already had Remus’s fly undone and his cock out by the time the thing landed on the ground with a dull thud.

Sirius sank to his knees and kissed Remus’s tip, drawing away to loop up at Remus. The moisture from the tip clung to his lips, and his mouth felt cool in the cavernous room. He licked the precum away, salty and bitter. But it was _Remus_ and that was what mattered.

Remus chorded his figures through Sirius’s hair as he started to play with him — licking the tip, light kissing along the shaft, running his thumb along the underside. Enough to get him worked up, but nothing that would get him off.

Remus started to let out little mewling sounds, pressing his hips up towards Sirius’s lips. “ _Sirius…_ ”

Sirius took his entire length in his mouth.

“ _Fuck.”_

Sirius withdrew long enough to putter a lubrication spell, then his mouth went back to Remus, who hissed as the spell sent moisture down between his legs. Sirius’s fingers went to tease his hole, earning a little groan from Remus, whose hips were moving of their own volition, back into Sirius’s fingers, forward into the warm cavern of his mouth.

Remus didn’t last long. Sirius pulled off him at the last moment, stroking his cock as thick ropes of white drew lines across his chest. Remus looked down with hooded eyes, pupils so blown they looked black.

Remus toppled over, his knees weakened with pleasure. Sirius caught him.

Sirius climbed over Remus, kissing his cheeks and jawline, then his lips. He felt the stickiness of Remus’s release between them. There was something about the depravity of it all that made Sirius want to kiss Remus even harder. Teeth clanging, sloppy. If Remus had a problem with it, he didn’t complain.

“God,” Remus said through gritted teeth during a brief parting of lips, “just _fuck me_ already. _Please_.”

Sirius groaned as Remus palmed him through his trousers, his fingers going to his fly. Sirius kicked his pants down and away, his hard cock flush with Remus’s as he brought their lips back together. Remus let out a little hissing sound as Sirius’s member moved against his sensitive, softening one.

“Sorry,” Sirius whispered.

“Don’t be sorry,” Remus said. “But please, I _need it_.”

So did Sirius, though he didn’t say so. Instead he just lined himself up with Remus’s puckered hole, and pressed in.

Tightness and heat enveloped him, and he felt for a moment like he was going to die. He’d fucked people before, of course. But this was Remus. And that simple fact made everything different, stronger. He gripped Remus’s hips as he bottomed out, Remus’s arms wrapping around his neck, his thighs around his waist. Remus’s skin was a mess of scars and bite marks, and there was something so gloriously textured about his skin. He had so many more edges than anyone else. His little remaining brain capacity coughed up some stupid thing Lily had said once about “surface area,” a concept from one of her old muggle textbooks. The scars and bumps and glorious mess of him meant touching him was somehow just _more_ than touching anyone else.

As he started to thrust, Remus’s breath came in broken huffs against his ear. He felt each one down his spine. They kissed and there was so much contact and _heat_ that Sirius was sure he would melt. He hit a spot deep inside of Remus and everything tightened and for a moment if someone had asked him his name, he wouldn’t have recalled it.

Remus was a very active partner. He clawed at Sirius as they made love, placed love bites along his shoulders and collarbone and hissed filthy phrases that made little grammatical sense but activated something in Sirius that made him speed up.

The heap of rubbish they were fucking on was like a living entity beneath them. Every movement dislodged something and at one point the pile collapsed a little, sending them down closer to the floor and changing their angle in a way that made Remus howl. Something metal was pressed against Sirius’s right thigh. He didn’t care.

His movements became more erratic as the sensations finally caught up with him, and he felt Remus tightening beneath him. He let out a hiss at the sensation, certain he was about to ascend into… well, not _godhood_ , but certainly a different state than he was in at the moment.

It didn’t let up. “It’s okay, babe, let go. I want to feel you.” Remus’s whispered words confirmed that the tightening was intentional.

Sirius didn’t need to be told again. His grip on Remus’s hips tightened and his thrusting become so forceful Remus had to reach a hand back and brace his hand on some half-broken bookshelf to keep them stabilized.

He came with a cry, pleasure moving through him with a power that punched out any other possible thoughts or actions. He collapsed on Remus, dimly aware of the other man’s arms wrapping around him.

Their breath echoed off the walls of the little cavern room. Eventually Sirius got enough power over his body to pull out of Remus, taking a little pleasure of the gasp Remus let out at the sensation. Sirius laid down at his side.

“Fuck,” Remus breathed.

Sirius grunted agreement, nuzzling into Remus’s side and wrapping his arms around him.

“We forgot a condom,” Remus said, shifting with some slight discomfort. Sirius imagined a stream of his come seeping from Remus. He wasn’t about to pretend he didn’t like that thought.

“Shit,” he said, some distant worry about disease echoing in the back of his thoughts. “Guess we should get tested, or something? I mean, if Avery’s got anything…”

“He doesn’t,” Remus said. “We both got tested a while ago.”

“Ah,” Sirius said, bliss still too heavy in his veins for him to go further down that line of inquiry. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Mmmm,” Remus said, voice sleepy. He let the subject drop.

Eventually Sirius got enough energy to magic the messes off their skin and summon their clothes back. They tossed on their trousers and shirts. After a few minutes, the two started to doze off, heads resting on their robes and some of the softer debris.

Sirius was woken some time later by a sharp, familiar laugh.

“Wow,” Avery’s voice cut through the still of the moment like something out of a nightmare. “I’d expect this from Black, but you, Lupin? I’m disappointed.”

He and Remus scrambled up. Sirius reached instinctively towards his robes to get his wand, but found them empty. There were two familiar shapes grasped in Avery’s hand. In the other, he held his own wand, pointed directly at them.

“How did you know where we are?” Remus asked. “Is this your… collection, or something?”

“No,” Avery said, “it’s hers,” he pulled his robe aside, revealing a shaking house elf. “Lacey here likes to collect things. Lost things, broken things. I pay her to tell me if she finds anything interesting. So you can imagine my surprise when she told me a few days ago that she found some rather compromising pictures of myself and another male student.”

Sirius tensed.

Avery continued, voice clinical. “I was planning on disposing of them today, but then she informed me that two of my erstwhile lovers were in the room where my photographs were being stored. Engaging in some rather lewd activities. What a spectacular coincidence, right?”

Sirius tried to remember if he’d heard or seen anything while he and Remus were together, but couldn’t. That was to be expected, he supposed. He was otherwise occupied. It didn’t really matter, either way. It was obvious what they’d been doing. The room still smelled like sex.

Remus frowned. “Why didn’t you just burn them when you learned about them? Why wait?”

“Because there were a few things I needed to do first.”

Sirius let out a petulant little groan. “Are you ever going to get to the point of this speech, Avery?”

“Mmmmm,” Avery hummed. “Party with the advantage gets to do the talking, Black. So we’re going to have this conversation the way that I want to have it. You see, I can prove the nature of Mr. Lupin’s… oh, what is that adorable term you use for it? Furry little problem?”

Sirius could feel Remus tense at his side. He glanced over at him. His face was pale as a sheet.

“What do you mean?” Sirius asked, putting on his best possible mask of confusion, even though he was certain Avery could feel his heart pounding from across the room.

“Well,” Avery said, smirking, “what if I just showed you? C’mon gents, let's go for a walk.”

-/-

“What the fuck is this?” Sirius muttered. “I feel like I’m in some shitty muggle spy movie.”

“It does feel rehearsed,” Remus said, his eyes darting back to Avery, who was a few paces behind them, their wands in his pocket. He’d taken them through one of the secret paths leading to the area just outside of Hogsmeade. It was the middle of the night, and so virtually all of the village’s lights were out. Their breath was making little clouds as they walked. “He must’ve known about this for a while.”

“Do you think Snape told him?”

“No,” Remus whispered. “Dumbledore would have his head. He probably just figured it out on his own. I mean, come on, look at me. I’m covered in scars, I’ve got a giant bite on my side. I’d told him I was attacked by a dog when I was a child, but he probably didn’t believe me. God, I’m such an idiot.”

Sirius put a comforting hand on Remus’s back, tossing a crumpled piece of parchment down on the ground, a muttered incantation under his breath. It rolled away, moving against the wind. It was so small someone at Avery’s distance couldn’t have noticed it. He hoped.

Avery directed them towards a side path leading away from the town, and Sirius realized immediately where they were going.

He could hear the Shrieking Shack before he could see it. Shifting boards and loud moans, some of which were enchantments he’d placed on it himself.

“Look familiar?” Avery asked as they approached the building.

“It’s the shrieking shack,” Sirius said as flippantly as he could. “Are we ghost hunting or something?”

“Right,” Avery said, rolling his eyes dramatically, “supposedly, it’s the most haunted place in Britain.”

“That’s what I heard,” Sirius said with a shrug.

“So why do you and your friends spend so much time here?” Avery asked.

Sirius furrowed his brow, wondering how Avery could have possibly gotten that information. There probably wasn’t any point in denying it.

“Good place to be alone,” Sirius said. “The ghosts never bothered us much. Probably sensed our pure hearts and general good will.”

Avery snorted, he opened the door and gestured for them to go in with his wand.

If you had any sort of hunch what was going on in the shack, a few minutes inside would have confirmed it. There were healing potions everywhere, bandages, scratches on the wall. They usually cleaned up more after a full moon, but the last one had been so tense, what with Remus and Sirius fighting, that everyone left before they took their usual precautions. Sirius wanted to slap his former self across the face.

“I kept an eye on you,” Avery began, his voice more somber and less teasing than it had been before. “Always sick around the full moon, always getting hurt? Really, it was easy to figure out. And a quick owl to my uncle at the ministry confirmed it. He did some digging. You aren’t formerly in the registry — not yet — but you will be once you graduate. My uncle managed to get one of the people in the know of Dumbledore’s little experiment to tell him what happened. At first I wasn’t going to say anything,” he started pacing, and his words were getting more frantic, “but then Lacey told me that your _friend_ ,” he spat the word out like it was something that had rotted, “felt the need to play dirty… and… well… I wasn’t feeling so generous anymore.”

“He— he wasn’t—“

Sirius cut Remus off. “So now what? Have you told anyone?”

“Not yet,” Avery said. He was shaking with barely-concealed energy. “Have you sent the pictures? Lacey says she saw you pick up the photos, then she came to find me.”

“Not yet,” Sirius replied, jaw tense.

“Then give me the photos,” Avery said, extending the hand that wasn’t holding his wand.

“No,” Sirius said.

“What leverage do you think you have, Black?” Avery hissed. “I can have Lupin out on his ass by this time tomorrow.”

“And I can have you out on _your_ ass before that,” Sirius said. “Even if you did take the letter, how do you know I don’t have copies?”

A small flicker of movement briefly caught his eye, but he trained his gaze back on Avery, who was glaring at him with sme of the most openly direct hatred he’d ever seen in his life.

“My friends know I’m here, Black. Can yours say the same?”

“What exactly is it your friends think you’re doing here?” Sirius asked. “I can’t imagine you told them the truth.”

“I just said I’m putting a few Gryffindors in their place. They didn’t need much in the way of further explanation.”

“Was Snape among those friends?” Remus asked, voice rough.

“As a matter of fact, he was,” Avery sounded a little amused. “He actually advised against it. I think he’s scared of that friend of yours. Potter.”

Remus’s jaw tensed. “So what now? You tell everyone? We tell everyone? We ruin each other’s lives and congratulate ourselves on our cleverness?”

“No,” Avery said, shaking his head and looking truly sad for the first time, “I just want you to give me the pictures. If you do that, no one gets hurt. Nothing happens to either of you.”

“Awww, c’mon, Avery,” James said, sauntering into the room, wand extended. “That sounds cliche even for you.”

Avery jumped at the sound of his voice, then glared at James. “This doesn’t concern you, Potter.”

“Doesn’t it?” James asked, eyebrow cocked, savoring his little moment of heroism as he circled Avery. “Because from the sound of it, you’re threatening my friends. That concerns me quite a bit.”

“Look,” Sirius stepped forward, hands up in surrender. “No one’s done anything yet. No one has to. We do nothing, you do nothing. We know each other’s secrets, so we can just say nothing and move on.”

Avery didn’t step back. “Once Lupin graduates, his secret will become public knowledge, and you’ll have no further reason to withhold what you know. How can I know you won’t do anything once that happens?”

“You’ll just have to take our word for it,” Sirius said.

Avery let out a bitter laugh. “Are you _joking_?”

“What if I made a vow?” Remus said. “An unbreakable vow. Would you believe us then?”

“There’s ways around that,” Avery said, shaking his head. “You could have someone else release them, or something. I want all the copies and the negatives.”

“But you can’t ever know how many copies there are,” Sirius said. “At the end of the day, you’ll just have to trust us.”

“Can’t you see that I can’t?” Avery’s frustration came though in his voice. He was starting to lose control, Sirius realized. His stomach sank with dread. “I can’t possibly win in this situation. Unless—” He extended his wand up to the ceiling, bright light coming from his wand, aimed at the roof.

But then his body recoiled and he let out a loud howl, the spell going wide and bursting a window. Avery fell to the floor, slapping madly at his body. Tiny flickers of Peter’s tail caught in the moonlight, but Peter dashed away into the darkness before Avery could figure out what was going on.

Remus and Sirius scrambled to grab their wands, which had fallen to the ground as Avery struggled.

He scrambled to his feet, eyes darting between the three wands pointed at him.

“Just drop it Avery. If this ever comes to light, we’ll know it’s you. You no longer have the advantage. Let it go, and we’ll pretend this never happened,” James sounded so severe Sirius almost recoiled at the sound of his voice.

“What have you ever done that would make me trust you?” Avery hissed.

“This place _is_ haunted, Avery,” James said, stepping forward. “No matter what we use it for. The spirits of this place aren’t bound here. Don’t you remember that from History of Magic? If you betray us, the spirits will come for you. They have their loyalties, and I can assure you, that loyalty is not to you.”

Now he was just making shit up, Sirius realized. But Avery was glancing nervously around the room. He supposed Avery never paid attention. He’d believe anything James said.

“The spirits know we mean what we say. But I’m not so sure they trust you. I don’t know, what do you think, spirits? Should _we_ trust this man?”

Avery fell forward as some unseen force shoved him to the ground. He let out an animalistic sound and ran from the room, clambering down the stairs and out the door.

Sirius and Remus glanced at each other in confusion, then James started laughing. “Brilliant,” he said between heaves of laughter, “that was bloody brilliant.”

Lily pulled the invisibility cloak off, her grin as big as his. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a person make that sound.”

“I did once,” Peter said, emerging in his human form from the shadowy corners of the room, “when my Uncle Elbert got a rather delicate part of his body stuck in a vanishing cabinet.”

“How does that even happen?” Lily asked.

“We decided as a family not to ask,” Peter said with a little grin. “You two alright there?” he asked.

Sirius and Remus were rather frozen in the corner, unable to do much more than blink at the space where the man who’d been threatening to destroy lives had been moments before.

“Maybe we should give them some time,” Lily said, taking the other two boys’ arms. “C’mon, let’s go back to bed.”

They went with her easily, one single worried look from James as they descended the stairs. “Nothing happened tonight, alright?” he said,

Sirius nodded. “Nothing happened.”

Remus made a grunt in agreement.

It was a few moments before either of them spoke.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said. “That couldn’t have been how you wanted all this to go.”

“No way around it,” Remus said. “Not sure we could have just asked him to be nice.”

“Are you angry?”

“Yes.”

“Who at?”

“Everyone.”

Sirius knew full well he was not exempt from _everyone_ in this situation. “Look, I’m not going to pretend like I regret what I did. But I can promise I’ll try.”

Remus snorted. “Try to regret it?”

Sirius shrugged. “Maybe?”

Remus gave him a sad little smile. “Shitty people doing shitty things is a fact of the world. No matter what. I had just thought that Avery was… I don’t know… better than that?”

Sirius nodded. “He was scared,” the situation was behind him. He could afford to be magnanimous. “We all do bad things when we’re scared.”

“Right,” Remus sighed. “But I guess you meant well… so there’s that?”

“Road to hell, and whatever,” Sirius muttered.

“Well, if one of us is going to hell, I figure we both are.”

“It’d be lonely without you,” Sirius said, a little smile coming to his lips.

And they kissed. Right there, in the Shrieking Shack. Something they’d never done before, and probably would never do again.

It was never going to be a happy place, Sirius knew. Especially not for Remus. There were so many horrible memories, so much pain. In some ways it _was_ haunted.

But then there would also be moments like that, or moments like the morning after a full moon. Hope and love and friendship. Smiles and tenderness and alright-ness, despite it all.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
